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The ''Vaimānika Śāstra'' (, lit. "shastra on the topic of Vimanas"; or "science of aeronautics", sometimes also rendered ''Vimanika, Vymanika, Vyamanika'') is an early 20th-century Sanskrit text on aerospace technology. It makes the claim that the ''vimānas'' mentioned in ancient Sanskrit epics were advanced aerodynamic flying vehicles. The existence of the text was revealed in 1952 by G. R. Josyer who asserted that it was written by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry (1866–1940), who dictated it during the years 1918–1923. A Hindi translation was published in 1959, while the Sanskrit text with an English translation was published in 1973. It contains 3000 shlokas in 8 chapters which Shastry claimed was psychically delivered to him by the ancient Hindu sage Bharadvaja. The text has gained favor among proponents of ancient astronaut theories. A study by aeronautical and mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1974 concluded that the aircraft described in the text were "poor concoctions" and that the author showed a complete lack of understanding of aeronautics. Regarding the "Rukma Vimana" the study noted - "If the craft is taken to mean what the drawing and the text say, it can be stated that the craft is a decided impossibility" ==Origin and publication== Subbaraya Shastry was a mystic from Anekal, who was reputed to speak out verses (''slokas'') whenever he got inspiration, described by Josyer as "a walking lexicon gifted with occult perception". According to Josyer, he dictated the text to G. Venkatachala Sharma in the early 1900s (completing it in 1923). According to the history unearthed by Mukunda et al.,〔 Shastry was born in a small village in Hosur Taluk. His parents died at a young age and he was diseased and in a poor state. While wandering, he met a great saint at Kolar, who initiated him into spirituality and revealed to him several shastras, including the Vimana Shastra. Afterwards, Shastri settled into normal life. Shastri had no formal schooling and learnt to read and write only after returning from his encounter with the saint. It is unlikely the text was his own invention. He was unsure of the practicality of the ideas and when Dr. Talpade of Bombay tried to make models under his guidance, none of them was able to fly. Subbaraya Shastry died in 1941, and Venkatachala took his manuscripts into keeping. The ''Vaimānika Śāstra'' manuscript appeared at Rajakiya Sanskrit Library, Baroda by 1944.〔, p. 2.〕 The text was published in Hindi in 1959 and later in English by G.R. Josyer, titled ''Vymanika Shastra''.〔 Josyer's edition also added illustrations drawn by T. K. Ellappa, a draughtsman at a local engineering college in Bangalore, under the direction of Shastry, which had been missed in the 1959 edition. Its existence was first announced publicly in a 1952 press release by G.R. Josyer, who had founded his "International Academy of Sanskrit Research" in Mysore the year before. In the foreword to the 1973 publication that contained the full Sanskrit text with English translation, Josyer quotes a 1952 press release of his which was "published in all the leading dailies of India, and was taken up by Reuter and other World Press News Services":
Josyer then tells how he was visited by "Miss Jean Lyon, journalist of Toronto and New York" for an interview, and how Lyon in her ''Just Half a World Away'' (1954) concluded that he was "guilty of a rabid nationalism, seeking to wipe out everything since the Vedas". A critical review pronounced Josyer's introduction to be "least scholarly by any standards." and said that "the people connected with publication – directly or indirectly – are solely to blame either for distorting or hiding the history of the manuscripts." perhaps in an attempt to "eulogise and glorify whatever they can find about our past, even without valid evidence". By tracing the provenance of the manuscript, interviewing associates of Shastry (including G. V. Sharma to whom the text was originally dictated), and based on the linguistic analysis of the text, the review concluded that it came into existence sometime between 1900 and 1922.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Vaimānika Shāstra」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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